Centre of HOPE - Dehradun, Uttarakhand

The project is a result of a strategic partnership between S&S Empowering Solutions Pvt. Ltd and HOPE worldwide for skill development of the construction labourers working at the Sam India Builtwell Pvt.Ltd site in Dehradun.

The project, as the name suggests is being implemented with the goal to uplift the ‘aatmavishwas’ (self-confidence) of the labourers, most of who are daily wage earners. Being in a highly demanding working environment where physical labour and skills are essentials, the project targets that skill building will only increase their chances of better pay and life, which is highly exploitative, given the unorganized labour situation in India and that of real estate.

A personal endeavour of the SAM India Builtwell Pvt.Ltd and its management body under its CSR activities, the Aatmavishwas Project is a first of its kind initiative to provide skill based training and life skills education along with financial literacy to the labourers at the construction site. With make-shift infrastructures created at the site, the on-job practical training and theory classes creates more value for the labourers. The project piously in turn wants to improve the lives of these labourers by imparting skills-based training and life skills orientation. The project is committed to train 800 construction workers in specific trade skills of masonry, shuttering carpenter and bar bender along with life skills education in the next one year.

Indeed Aatmavishwas project takes a holistic approach to educate the labourers’ children too (6-14 years of age) with regular tuition classes and also to provide a crèche service for the young ones. Besides it also envisages inclusion of good medical healthcare both from the preventive and the curative point of view for the labourers and their family members.

With special focus on women to become more skilled in their work, the project is envisaging special training for them to become ‘skilled masons’ working at equal wages like the men. Giving an opportunity to the women at the site by training them in masonry, it is just taking a step ahead of making them more confident to earn and learn as their male counterparts. The initiative is to break the monotony of believing that women in these sites are good for labour and not to carry such skilled job willfully. Aatmavishwas Project sends out the message that women labourers are as much an asset for the company as the men. Until now however, most of the women have only been labourers assisting their husbands in their work or doing jobs which are insignificantly miniscule in quantity that it gets almost unnoticed.

The intention of SAM India Builtwell Pvt. Ltd, S&S Empowering Solutions and the HOPE worldwide through the Aatmavishwas Project is both to provide hope to the labourers for a better living and also a better earning status. It projects that in the future these people can themselves with the skills acquired at SAM India’s site choose to work and earn better which will not only improve their life individually but also of their families.